


Bridge

by ChaiFighter



Category: Doctor Who (2005)
Genre: Episode Tag, F/M, Regeneration, season 10
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-07-15
Updated: 2017-07-15
Packaged: 2018-12-02 08:40:48
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,866
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11505744
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ChaiFighter/pseuds/ChaiFighter
Summary: "By the time the lift hits bottom, he no longer recalls why he is laughing."From the Master into Missy, filling (some of) the space between seasons 10 and 8.





	Bridge

**Author's Note:**

> There's not a whole lot to this, and it's probably denser than it has a right to be, but I enjoyed writing it. I love Missy so much, y'all don't even know.
> 
> Might add more chapters for other season gaps later.

By the time the lift hits bottom, he no longer recalls why he is laughing. He is beaming, and though the mad cackle has faded, it still rattles in his chest. Or maybe that’s the blood. 

It’s probably the blood.

The laughing stops as he drags himself out of the lift and into the filth of a city street. It’s pathetic. He would sneer at himself if he were watching. He hauls himself arm over arm, anger pitching higher with every painstaking inch, as he fights his way to a closed-off corner of alleyway where hopefully his regeneration light show will be hidden. Gasping, he sags against the grungy brick wall.

What happened? He remembers bits and pieces, but they’re not a coherent story. The blood loss and quickening rise of energy beneath his skin are making it hard to think. Evidence says he got stabbed, obviously, and he probably shot something just before setting off in the lift, since his laser screwdriver is still in his hand. These observations are insubstantial and near incoherent, misted over by pain and the lurching of time, and even as he reaches for them they are fading. 

Regeneration is becoming more insistent by the second. He is beginning to glow. May as well get to it. He grits his teeth, tilts his head back, and lets go--

She wakes in an alleyway, not knowing how she got there. Her head feels wretched. She has the feeling it’s been rearranged, shifted about like a jigsaw with different pieces clicked together. It’s uncertain whether they’re wrong now or fixed. 

Huh. She’s a she now. That might explain it. 

Why is she here? Last she remembers, she was still mucking about in the hospital. She didn’t have an aim there, really, just a bit of a joy trip. Origin of the cybermen, fun stuff. Got to wear an ugly mask, talk in a silly voice. That doesn’t explain what she’s doing out here in an alley, as a ‘she,’ wearing the snazzy getup she’d been saving for a special occasion. 

She’s rather put out that she’s finally wearing it and her body’s changed so it no longer fits. Seems a waste.

Around her, the entire floor is shot to hell. The ceiling is full of holes, there are fires all over the place, and cybermen are flittering about everywhere. Dirty, all of it, but that’s nothing new. A fair bit of screaming. Lots of shiny new tech that was definitely not in operation last she remembers. She seems to have lost a few years. 

She stands and immediately stumbles; her center of gravity has shifted down from her chest to her hips, and it takes a few moments to adjust. She tuts to herself, then wonders, since she's a lady now, whether she's gotten lucky and ended up a sexy one. She's always found the idea of being a sexy evil lady vaguely appealing, since it would make it much easier to distract any male resistance.

Also because she's always been very attracted to sexy evil ladies. That's a lot of it. 

Cursory patting suggests a decent figure, and a bit of poking around the head area reveals long, dark hair and significant cheekbones. Good structure, fairly smooth-- things feel promising. She'll have to wait for a mirror to get a proper assessment, but for now she's feeling rather smug about her chances. She'll have to find some suitable props; if she's rolled well in the genetic lottery, she'd best not waste it with shoddy costuming. 

Now, on her current whenabouts. There are two explanations for her clear displacement in time: she's forgotten a brief trip in the lift, or she's forgotten a few full years. She casts herself back along her personal timeline to examine the gaps and immediately feels a tugging twist in her gut. She pulls harder, yanking at the edges of the blank space in an effort to make budge whatever is blocking her, and the feeling intensifies until she feels close to vomiting. 

Paradox. 

With this realization, she lets go of the threads-- but it's too late. A few strands snap free, and she doubles over retching. Her time sense is vibrating like a plucked string, and her legs have gone to jelly. Her brain feels like ground meat. She collapses against the nearest wall, sliding down to sit. She tastes singed space-time and for a moment she is standing on the bridge of the Valiant, breathing in as the sky splits open. 

It takes a full hour of intermittent unconsciousness to pull herself together. When she resurfaces, the world is sharp and crackling, and the smell of burning is still in her nose. It takes longer than it should to realize that it's the normal dying-city kind of burning and not the cataclysmic paradox kind. Slowly, too slowly, she reorders her thoughts into working condition, and when she is finished she finally realizes what this pain has paid for. 

She's taken back some memories. 

Her mind clears, shocked back into awareness. It’s not much, just snippets. Several dark blue swishes, stabbing pain in her abdomen, fire that she recognizes from the collapsing city around her. More significant: a blurred mess of visual information as some woman slams her (him) against a wall and demands that he always, always carry a spare dematerialization circuit. Without thinking, she touches her breast pocket and finds, to her astonishment, exactly that. 

Tamping down her growing excitement, she turns back to her reclaimed memories. There is only one more: a single vivid image of the view down her (his) own arm as he points the laser screwdriver at someone. The target is out of focus in favor of the screwdriver, but she doesn't mourn it long as she spies the laser’s setting.  

It's set to kill a time lord. 

What time lord is alive outside the lock for her to want dead? Has she killed the Doctor? The idea sends a thrill of revulsion down her spine. It's not like she's never imagined it before. She's seen it in her mind’s eye, standing over him as the ultimate victor, nothing more to oppose her dominion. She'd be elated, vindicated, utterly unrestrained-- and within a month she'd be bored enough to die. No, she doesn't want the Doctor dead. The Doctor is almost as necessary to her existence as her own soul. She'll hurt him, certainly, but never kill him. 

So why is the laser set to kill a time lord?

Paradox...

A fire explodes into life not twenty feet to her right. She struggles back to her feet, wobbles, steadies, and sets off at a brisk, if uneven stride in the opposite direction. 

The best explanation for a paradox to have occurred is that she crossed her own time stream and time corrected itself by wiping the period from her mind. But that doesn't account for the laser. She'd hardly shoot herself, after all. Either she met the Doctor and made a truly stupid decision to kill him, or another time lord escaped the war, ended up here, and pissed her off enough to warrant murder. Neither option seems particularly viable. 

Still. She ought to check if the Doctor is alright.

She reaches the hospital, and the place is buzzing. Conversion tech has apparently been streamlined, so the line is moving swiftly, practically a revolving door. Humans in one side, cybermen out the other. It's beautiful, really. She gives it a smile as she sweeps in the side entrance. 

It's simple enough to breeze her way through to the central control hub. Ill-tailored though her clothes may be, they are still vastly more professional than what anyone else is wearing in this dump, and perceived authority is usually as good as the real thing. She keys in a few concise lines of code, mocks up a remote from a bunch of scraps and nonessential hub components, and walks out with sole control of the entire cyber army in the literal palm of her hand. 

Before she leaves the building to its good work, she returns to the room she occupied as Razer. In the middle right drawer of the desk, there is a compact mirror. She takes it out. 

Oh, this regeneration is going to be  _ fun _ .

“Hello, sexy,” she says to her reflection. It’s the first time she’s heard her own voice, and she is indescribably pleased with herself. This day is turning out just marvelous.

She blows herself a kiss, snaps the mirror shut, and leaves the room with a new swing in her hips. Outside the hospital, she struts the central avenue like it’s a runway, with the occasional twirl for effect. The humans in the line for conversion, which stretches all down the drive, pay little mind, though she does get a whistle. 

“You're too kind,” she calls. She doesn't notice time slowly beginning to shift.

She uncovers her TARDIS where it’s camouflaged as the back wall of a dead end alley and sets straight to work on repairs. Then, systems booted and circuit replaced, she toys with the remote she’s built, turning it over in her hand. 

Time stretches, groaning...

She reaches into her pocket and retrieves the laser screwdriver, holding the two up next to each other. The laser is still set to kill a time lord. She should really find the Do--

Time snaps.

She no longer remembers that she is missing time. 

The years that she skipped are no longer absent, simply as dreadfully monotonous as those that came before. She did not die of a stab wound; a stray cyberman’s laser triggered her regeneration. She found the spare circuit in a junk heap, she changed the laser setting to pretend there was someone interesting here, she’s dressed up because the cyberman genesis counts as a special occasion-- the mind can invent a reason for anything. Other than her small scraps of hard-won memories, she has no evidence of anything wrong at all. 

But she knows there is  _ something _ .

Something…

The Doctor, the Doctor. It's been too long since she's seen him. Last she recalls of his face is his stricken expression as the gateway closed, trapping her (him) with Rassilon. She wonders if he's still got that face. It was cute, and even cuter in pain. Not all of his faces suffered so adorably. Maybe he's gotten new pets too. She feels a flare of resentment and quickly stifles it.

Oh Doctor, Doctor. Now that he's entered her mind, it seems he is loathe to leave. She bets he's gotten himself a new face by now. He's not like her, burning through lives, but he's not exactly conservative about them either. It's due for a switch. She wonders if it's an older face again. The last one was so young… 

Suddenly, desperately, she wants to see him again. She’s been bored for so long, and hardly a soul in the universe can keep up with her like he can. She needs to find him, or she’ll melt into a stagnant puddle of wasted intellect. She needs a good game.

She remembers the remote in her hand. 

She knows exactly where to go.

 

**Author's Note:**

> I'm on tumblr as chaifighter if you want to cry with me over the end of season 10. Thank you for reading :)


End file.
